The New York Times ran this piece this morning, airing out even more of the stinky little Streb company undergarments that have been publicly laundered for all in the dance world to debate over.

But two interesting things arise here outside of the obvious issue of dancers’ safety.

First, this kind of episode helps erode the urban-legend-cum-Utopian illusions that dance–and therefore, the dance industry–is somehow ethically wholesome at its core. That the exploration of movement is a most Apollonian endeavor, and the processes by which those explorations are rendered must be, by association, humanitarian and ethically righteous.

But it’s funny when you consider that dance is notorious for the kind of inhumane expectations it forces upon its dancers, particularly its de facto promotion of eating disorders through rigid and sometimes verbally abusive tactics to get dancers (even the little girls) to slender up so that their physiques conform to traditionally narrow standards of body presentation.

Second, it forces us to look at dance companies as businesses. In terms of business ethics, it was unethical of Terry Dean Bartlett to announce a major injury to the media (any prominent dance-world participant’s email list is bound to host of media contacts in it) without formal consent of the company’s chief, in this case, Streb and her Board. That is the kind of thing you can get fired for in the business world. For a business, it’s a liability to have employees that step out of the realm of protocol and go vigilante because he finds the bureaucratic process frustrating. I would have fired him for doing that. And I can’t conceive of any reason that Mr. Bartlett could be upset by the turn of events unless he had already been having prior difficulties working with Streb, which she maintains as true and as the real reason for his firing. While I don’t believe that the unapproved announcement of the dance benefit for deeAnn Nelson had nothing to do with Mr. Bartlett’s firing, I can’t sincerely argue that he didn’t deserve to be fired for doing it.

This isn’t to say anything about the benefit itself. It was a great idea. It also doesn’t seem to me that Ms. Streb would have completely objected to a benefit had it been handled in accordance with Streb Extreme Action executives. The way it went down inevitably made it look like she was unwilling to have such a benefit. I don’t think Streb is the big bad wolf here, but even a caring mama wolf will turn her back on her suckling cubs if they start to bite.

Times have changed since Merce Cunningham and John Cage hopped in a bus with a handful of dancers and toured the country, I’m sure without any contracts, liability waivers, insurance clauses and the like. But that is the world of today. Dance business is still business. And all aspiring companies should be aware that to be in the business of dance is going to change a lot of things, especially in terms of decision making and protocol. And some day, you might just find yourself having to put your foot down on someone else’s, if for the sole reason that they didn’t recognize who was boss.